CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie floating ideas to improve league, such as fixed officiating crews and increased penalties ... Halifax team could balance East and West
People are rarely ever happy with the work of the officials in the CFL.
Right or wrong, fans of the game often point to the job done by the men in stripes as a reason to tune out from league games.
New CFL senior director of officiating, Darren
Hackwood, is hoping to change that and one plan of attack will include having the league’s best officials work more games.
“We’re talking about going away from assembled crews to fixed crews,” CFL commissioner Randy
Ambrosie said Tuesday. “In a conversation that Darren has had with the NFL — they’ve done some research on this and were willing to share it with us — they said crews that work together all the time have fewer errors. They seem to get into a rhythm with one another. They can kind of feel the way they’re going to officiating a game. So I think Darren is looking to more of a crew strategy for the 2018 season.”
The CFL rules committee, made up of a mix of head coaches, general managers, officials and representatives from the CFL Players Association, began meetings in Winnipeg Tuesday night, as part of CFL Week. They are expected to make recommendations for rule changes for the 2018 season on Thursday.
Much of their focus will be on improving player safety in the league going forward, but they’ll also take a look at rules to improve the pace of play.
“The thing I heard from the fans when I did my tour this year was ‘Time is precious,” Ambrosie said. “We’re living in a world where the clock seems to move faster. We’re looking at changes that could potentially speed up the game.
“One of the areas we’ll look at is what coaches might be able to challenge.”
Some other potential rule changes that will be discussed include:
Making all near-scoring plays automatically reviewed. In the past, if a player was ruled to have scored a touchdown, the play would automatically be reviewed by the command centre but if he was ruled out of bounds on the field, the play would not be reviewed unless a coach threw a challenge flag. This could change.
Illegal contact penalties — whether called on the field or through a challenge — might not be enforced if the infraction is not near the play or is otherwise irrelevant.
The rules committee will discuss significantly increasing the penalty for a player who receives two major fouls in one game. On the table are ejection from the game or a 25 to 30-yard penalty.
EAST-WEST IMBALANCE
While the East Division has won two of the last three Grey Cups — the 8-9-1 Ottawa Redblacks taking the title in 2016 and the 9-9 Toronto Argos winning it in 2017 — the West has dominated in the regular season in recent years with very little reward.
In fact, in the last two seasons, the fourth place team in the West Division had a better record than any team in the East. Those teams crossed over to play in the East against teams with .500 or lower records, while teams ahead them in the West had to get through teams with far superior records.
It all led to calls to change the division structure from East-West to just one division, in which the top six teams would make the playoffs.
Ambrosie gauged the Canadian public on that issue as he toured the country during this off-season but he found people don’t have much of an appetite for a change — at least right now.
“Interestingly enough, the thing I found the fans were more interested in this year was the (potential) Halifax expansion,” Ambrosie said. “That would then, of course, create two five-team divisions, one in the East and one in the West and there would be advantages to that.
“Each team would probably play 12 of its 18 games inside the division and that means they’d only play most of the other division teams once, and one team twice. That would be a big change and then you’d truly go back to two balanced divisions, five in each.
“It seemed among most fans I spoke to that they said that makes perfectly good sense, so there wasn’t as much conversation about a one-division CFL.”
Though Ambrosie said it’s important to keep an open mind on any potential changes to the playoff structure, he said “I think we need to let this Halifax thing play itself out.”
There’s no timeline as to when a Halifax expansion team might be ready to join the CFL, but there is a group of potential owners in place and there are discussions taking place at all levels of government.
“I totally respect the idea that sometimes it’s not fair when one division is out of sync or unbalanced with the other,” Ambrosie said. “But there’s such an amazing tradition in Canada, East vs. West. There’s a natural rivalry between those two parts of our great country and that makes it fun. I would like to, for the moment, see what happens if we can end up with this 10-team, truly national coast-to-coast league.”
AMATEUR FOOTBALL
The CFL is making a significant investment in amateur football in Canada, pledging to donate more than $3 million this season to support tackle, touch and flag football programs.
The league and the nine member clubs invested $3,352,000 into amateur football last season and they hope to at least match that number this year.
“You’ve got to work on the development of your game,” Ambrosie said.
“There’s a lot of competition for kids’ time and attention and getting people to fall in love with your game through playing it is important.
“This is a statement that we’re putting a stake in the ground to be more focused on an overall strategy. How do we get more kids playing the game, boys and girls? It’s far easier to convert someone into a fan if they have experience in the game. They have that connection.”
WORST JOB EVER?
Ambrosie visited with fans in all nine CFL cities plus Halifax this off-season and he asked the same question to each group.
“I did ask fans if they could, off the top of their heads, name a more thankless job than officiating in pro sports,” Ambrosie said.
“Commissioner was the only thing they could come up with,” he laughed.
“I was a little depressed on hearing that.”